Bold move for Bodaway-Gap, chapter attracts $9.2 billion private project
San Francisco Peaks. (Courtesy wikipedia.com)
PAGE, Ariz.
Each time they arrived in Window Rock to meet with tribal officials, Joe Bergen and Thomas Shon would find no one at the meeting, resulting in disappointment and a long drive home.
“We drove to Window Rock many times because we were told that a meeting would be set up,” Shon said in frustration. “We would rush there by 10 a.m. to find that no one is around. We would turn around and come back home.”
The officials did not once meet with Bergen and Shon, who wanted to help the Navajo Nation with new market opportunities from a vastly bigger customer base.
Next weekend, Bergen and Shon will be breaking ground for seven projects in Bodaway-Gap, Ariz. where their company, Sacred Mountain LLC, is set to invest $9.2 billion.
Bergen said the groundbreaking on Nov. 7 is by invitation only — which does not include the Navajo Office of the President and Vice President.
“The President’s office isn’t invited because (Begaye-Nez administration and former administrations) have not done anything for us,” said Bergen, a full-blooded Diné who’s the CEO and owner of Sacred Mountain. “We were left in the dark.”
Bergen and Shon understand what it actually takes for a business like Sacred Mountain to go global, meaning expanding to other parts of the world and tackling issues like business strategy, marketing and international logistics.
On Saturday, Bergen and Shon met with the Navajo Times to present Vision 2020, Sacred Mountain’s comprehensive sphere of diversified development projects designed to implement Bodaway-Gap Chapter’s action plans for economic and social sustainability.
Shon said Vision 2020 means it’s an economic development program that Sacred Mountain wants to implement in the chapter, consisting of six communities, as a result of a resolution that was passed.
“It’s a comprehensive program comprised of many sectors that can be immediate,” said Shon, who’s native Hawaiian. “We’re not talking about five or six years down the road. Projects are immediate.”
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow